


In The Middle Of The Night

by MonikaFileFan



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, Canon Compliant, Comfort, F/M, MSR, Romance, Sick Fic, UST, pre revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 22:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16690168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonikaFileFan/pseuds/MonikaFileFan
Summary: Chapter 1: Season 6. Mulder’s down for the count and Dr. Scully makes a late night house call.Chapter 2: Scully’s POV set Pre Revival. Mulder is sick, and yet again, Dr. Scully comes to is rescue.Chapter 3: Mulder comforts Scully during a rough night of battling cancer. Set in late season 4.These chapters are answers to sickfic prompts and meant to be read as separate pieces.





	1. Delirium

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this spur of the moment while I was writing another piece. This is beta free but I think you'll still like it.

 

Mulder shivers, rousing him from his fitful sleep. His eyes roll and immediately his head pounds, sending a wave of nausea through his stomach. He felt like shit all day and finally passed out on the couch shirtless after downing a dose of NyQuil and Motrin. Wincing at the red numbers on the desk clock, he sees it’s 11:20 pm and realizes he’s slept for four hours straight.

Slowly, he rises from the couch and scuffles to the bathroom, his gut clenching the whole way. He barely makes it before he loses all content of his stomach, including the medication. He wipes his mouth, quicky brushes his teeth, and on his way back to the living room, dizziness strikes and his body crumbles to the floor.

“I feel terrible,” he whines, frustrated and shaky. He is so damn weak but manages to get up and make his way back to the couch and flop down, snagging the phone on the way. Minutes later, his breathing slows and darkness consumes him.

\---

A car alarm blaring outside of Mulder’s apartment window wakes him with a jolt. He hisses in discomfort while attempting to toss his arms and legs off the side of the couch. But when he lifts his head and strains his muscles, shooting pains throb in his skull and an ache sings deep in his joints. “Ugh...” Mulder grips the table to his right and gingerly pulls himself into a sitting position, causing a loud suctioning sound of his sticky skin along the couch to echo in his head.  

It’s now 2:05 AM and Man-Flu or not, he’s man enough to admit when he needs a doctor. _His_ doctor. He grabs the phone and shivers again as the chill of the air hits the layer of sweat on his back and head.

Three rings later a sleepy Scully answers. “Mulder?”

“Scully… I’m sick,” he whispers. Mulder knew her well enough to know she would immediately look at the time and sense it was him before answering. Her voice comforts him. And, it’s the weekend; he misses her.

“I’m on my way,” she breathes heavily into the mouthpiece and ends the call.

He tries to nod but ends up watching the light of from his fish tank whirl around him and feels his face hit leather before falling asleep again.

\---

Scully observes attentively as Mulder sighs, laying his feverish head on his pillow and stilling his restless legs. She finally breathes a sigh of relief that the medication she had to force feed him when she arrived is starting to kick in. She tucked the blanket around him snugly and took the time to study his face from above. Trying to memorize every new line, every curve and slope of his nose and scruffy jawline just in case he’s changed in the last couple of days spent apart.  

As soon as she tore her way through those elevator doors and into Mulder’s apartment to see him curled up, damp with sweat on his couch, her professional doctor persona took precedence. But now, as her hip rests along his rhythmically rising and falling chest, Scully herself can breathe again. Any middle of the night phone call from Mulder set her heart racing, but the moment she heard his weak desperate voice on the other end, she was out of bed and tearing at her silk pajamas before she’d uttered another word.

She ran the backs of her fingers over his forehead and down his cheek tenderly. Her brows furrowed at the thought of him needing _all_ _of_ _her_ so much. He needs her—not just as his partner, but as his friend, his doctor, and his… well that part, as much as she would like to, just can’t be defined at this point in their relationship.

Emboldened, Scully leans down and brushes her lips to his sweltering temple. Just a touch to ease her underlying ache to taste him. He startles and shivers. Scully slowly moves her body away from his to stand when Mulder’s hand suddenly grasps onto hers and squeezes tight, grunting with his eyes still closed.

“Scully?”

She leans down over him with one hand on the arm of the couch and the other squeezing his hot hand in return. “Hey, it’s me. You have a 104 degree fever.” With her nose a hair's breadth away from his, she tries to soothe his pained expression by circling her thumb across the back of his hand. But his brows knit together as his breath hitches, and his mouth twitches into a grimace. She feels a strong pull of affection deep inside her. “What hurts, Mulder?”

He squeezes her hand harder now and whispers, “my heart.” Scully freezes and instantly lays a hand over his partially exposed chest.

“Your chest hurts?” Her own heart pounds, fearing she may have missed something in her assessment. Scully immediately falls to her knees and feels his body heat radiate into her while she hovers her face over his. His closed eyes seep tears at the corners and they roll down his cheeks. “Mulder?”

“My heart hurts when you’re gone, Scully. Please, don’t leave,” he whimpers.

 _Oh, God!_ Her heart hurts now, too.

“Okay, shh... It’s okay, Mulder. I’m not going anywhere,” she entwines their fingers and caresses her other hand along his ribcage in reassurance. For her comfort just as much as his.

She watches while his face relaxes under her touch as he begins to drift back to sleep. “Love you,” he murmurs.

She swallows a gasp and her eyelids flutter shut. Mulder told her that he loves her just two months ago. She couldn’t trust Mulder’s words then—couldn’t believe them and it left her reeling. But this time, she does.

Scully believes.

She wonders if he’ll remember any of this amongst his feverous delirium in the middle of the night. And, in that very moment, Scully realizes she hopes that he does.

“Love you, too.”

  



	2. Constant and Touchstone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prompt for a companion chapter to this was asked on tumblr so I wrote it as a peek into where Mulder and Scully were in late 2015. Let me know how this makes you feel ❤️

 

_**November** , **2015**_

 

The loud shrill sound pierces the silence of her bedroom. She bats at the offending alarm clock and realizes, after the third slap, that it’s actually her house phone ringing and not her 6 AM wake up call. A wave of panic sets in. No one has called her landline but her mother in nearly six weeks.

 _Mulder_!

“Hello? Dana Scully...” She’s breathless, and immediately answers with a generalized greeting in case it were emergency personnel. A barrage of questions rush through her mind: What if he’s hurt? What if he’s done something stupid? What if he’s missing? Oh God, what if he’s dead? “Hello!”

Heavy breathing huffs through the earpiece. “Sc—Scully…”

Relief sweeps through her. “Mulder? What’s wrong?”

He grunts and clears his throat. “I’m sorry to call, but…” _Jesus, Mulder, spit it out,_ she thinks, her heart pounding harder than on her morning runs.

“What is it?” She doesn’t mean to sound harsh but goddammit, she’s worried. “Mulder, I haven’t heard from you in six weeks and you call me at…” she squints at the clock, “2:24 a.m. and make me guess why?” She’s called him on his birthday and they talked for an hour. It was wonderful and she missed him terribly since she left, but the tail end of her call had ended in snarky remarks with him telling her not to call unless she actually missed _him_ and not just his conversation. Truth was, she missed him the moment she had stepped off their front porch. “Mulder!”

“Scully, I’m sick,” he grunts, coughing directly into the phone. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m so damn sick I can barely sit up.”

She flies out of the bed before he even finishes his sentence, changing her clothes with the phone cradled the crook of her neck like a seasoned professional used to racing to her partner’s rescue in the middle of the night.

“Okay, I’m coming, Mulder; I’m coming.” She cringes at the thought that the last time she had said those words to him were the last time they made love months before she walked away. “Hey, I have to go now. I’ll see you when I get there.” She doesn’t want to hang up on him. If she could yank the corded phone from the wall just so she wouldn’t miss a word, she would.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he chuckles mirthlessly, and suddenly she knows why. That’s the only thing he had said to her on the night she told him she was leaving. _Well, at least he’s lucid_ , she thinks sourly.

“I know, Mulder. I’ve to go.” She replaces the phone and rushes out to her SUV with her heart in her throat.

——

She fumbles with the door, forgetting that the knob needs a harder twist, forgetting how much it hurt that she has to _remember_. With her emergency bag in hand, she walks in and gasps. The living room is… clean? Cleaner than she’s seen it in years, in fact. Everything is familiar yet different from before—before she left. It’s her presence that’s different. Her touch is gone and her chest aches at the reality. If it weren’t for the familiar furniture, the scent of oak, vanilla, and Mulder, she might think a stranger is living in their home.

It’s silent, which is concerning since Fox Mulder rarely lay in silence. The creaking of the stairs reminds her of her last visit to the house on New Years. Her mother had insisted on joining her to visit Mulder and ring in 2015 (his first one alone) surrounded by people who loved him. He had kissed her tenderly, just like their very first New Year’s Eve kiss fifteen years earlier, and Scully had ended the night in yearning tears with her mother’s hand clutched within hers as she pulled out of the driveway. She hasn’t been back since.

“Mulder?” She peeks her head into the bedroom and gasps yet again. This time, it does not mirror the scene of familiarity down stairs. There is nothing in this room that reminds her of her last night spent in the arms of the only man she’ll ever love. Her floor length mirror is flipped around, facing the wall. Her side of the room is completely bare with her empty dresser now shoved against the closet door where she had once hung her clothes. The beautiful comforter they had picked out together is now replaced with a plain black one; the color of mourning… The knot forming in her throat was getting harder to ignore. Taking another step into the darkness, she sees the rest. Tissues, dirty clothes, food wrappers, and a scattering of random papers with scribbles of words on them riddled the floor on only his side of the room. The smell of stale sweat permeates the air and a wastebasket layered with stomach contents sits on the floor.

“Scully…” he rasps, flinging off the covers and flicking on the lamp. Stunned, she realizes she’s been so taken aback by the state of the room that she hadn’t even noticed him laying there. “You, you came… been waitin’… thought you’d nev-never come.” His words were slurred and eyes glassy.

It upsets her that her first thought concerning him is: is he drunk? Her second is much more plausible. Is he delirious from sleep deprivation and going to ask when she’s coming home again? She doesn’t think she has the strength to tell him “I don’t know.”

“Jesus, Mulder.” She falls to his side to assess him, ignoring the fact that his sweat slicked body is completely nude.

Setting her medical bag on the floor, she dons her stethoscope and starts examining, as if she weren’t touching the body of the man she knows more intimately than her own.

A laundry list of possible illnesses and common conditions in men over 50 race through her mind. She mentally checks off each one as her fingers deftly run over Mulder’s skin. Stroke, heart attack, and high/low blood pressure are off her list immediately. Depression is a pre-existing diagnosis so she skips over that. As she moves down to palpate his abdomen, Scully has no doubt whatsoever that any erectile dysfunction that may have occurred within the last year, certainly is not an issue for Fox Mulder. He stood fully erect, hot and hard along his pelvis, making it impossible for her not to brush along his endowed length during her exam.

“Mm… smell good, Scully.” His eyes are closed yet a dreamy expression falls over his face. Even between bouts of vomiting and layers of sweat and stubble, Mulder is still overwhelmingly handsome.

Deep breathing and stoicism is the only way she’s going to get through tonight without losing herself in the process.

Scully’s about to suggest she help him into some boxers when her own temperature begins to rise at the sight of him, so quickly she turns into the bathroom for a cool rag instead. She knows from experience that excess friction will not help his “response” and detachment to _reactions_ of her touching his body is the path she should be walking down right now. Reminiscing about how amazing his “response” feels surging into her as she goes boneless with bliss during his time of need is very unScully-like.

A chill runs across his overheated skin and his muscles ripple beneath her palm. “Ugh! I feel like I’m dying.”

She pats his sternum. “You’re not dying, Mulder. I checked you out, remember? Thanks to an aggressive strain of the stomach virus going around, you’re just weak and low on fluids,” she assures, taking his pulse once again. “I’ve seen several cases just yesterday at the hospital, and you had your yearly check up just four months ago.” She remembers the flutter of her heart as he walked into her office, a thrill tickling down her spine; that of which only Mulder could give her.

“I should’ve just gone to the doctor two days ago,” he rasps, nuzzling the scruff of his jaw against her fingers at his pulse point.

“I am your doctor.” She attempts to smile at his joke but her lips won’t move, all but knowing he would rather suffer in silence than make her work day more complicated.

“Scully…” he grimaces and she’s not sure if it’s from discomfort or the thoughts poised at the tip of his tongue. Suddenly, he jolts up wearing his panic face and she knows exactly what’s about to happen. She expertly whisks the basket under his mouth as he promptly relieves the discomfort along with what probably feels like the lining of his stomach. With one hand clutching at her hip and the other shakily holding the plastic to his face, Mulder whimpers broken syllables that echo in the room. “Sorry… so sorry… it hurts… when you’re not…”

Her breath catches, her own stomach clenching and tumbles to her knees. This is what she’s afraid of, this is what she’s not ready to face. Oh God, she hurts, too.

Somehow Scully’s slowly able to find her voice, her professional decorum returning with severe effort on her part. “You’re dehydrated and your fever spiked,” she says, rubbing his fiery back as it arches with the force of his heaving. “I’ll give you something once you’re through.”

Minutes later, his body settles languidly along the now freshly changed sheets. Scully takes a wet cloth and wipes his tired face clean as she memorizes new lines and marks she hasn’t been close enough to notice in so long.

She tucks the sheet over his bare chest, fingers grazing his sparse hair as her eyes linger at his shapely pecs longer than professionally acceptable. If this were indeed a professional assessment on her part, she would not currently be having the vivid thoughts of touching every inch of his bare body with every inch of her own.

“I’ll just be downstairs on the couch tonight, Mulder, okay?” It takes every bit of her remaining self-control to not slide into bed with him, thread her fingers through is hair as his head lolls along her chest. “I’ll check on you again in a couple hours.”

His hand covers hers and squeezes. “You don’t have to stay, Scully. I just… I don’t wanna make you feel… uncomfortable, forced.” She shakes her head to argue but he continues. “Truth is, I woke after knocking myself out with Tylenol PM in a panic.” Licking his dry lips, he coughs again and pins her with a look of despair she’s come accustomed to. “I dreamt that you never came back. That you left because I was too far gone to save us both… and it felt like I was dying on the inside; that my heart was literally breaking.”

Tears well in her eyes and suddenly it’s _her_ heart that’s breaking. “Mulder…” The fact that his illness and the meds she had to force him to take are likely loosening his lips is something she chooses to ignore for the moment.

He shakes his head and presses her hand over his thrumming heart. “No, it’s okay, Scully; I just have a bug. Like you said, Doc, I’m not gonna die,” he smirks lazily, his glassy eyes as heavy as his words. “I think I just might live…”

As Mulder’s eyes flutter shut in exhaustion, Scully’s do the same in relief; hearing his voice as she touches him, as he looks her in the eye and fills her heart with both love and longing, and she feels her resolve beginning to crumble. Falling apart is not what she came here to do.

His breathing finally slows and the hot hand that was caressing hers, goes limp. The crease between his brow is still there and Scully cannot stop herself from wisping a fingertip across it, soothing it. And herself, if she’s being completely honest.

The image her of lifting the covers, and curling her chilled body around his warm one flashes through her mind but she swiftly blinks it away before it overcomes her. And, now, she is sure as her hand slides from beneath his to trail along his forearm, that it’s time for her to go.

She makes no move to leave, though; finding she has no desire to do so. But, she she needs to leave— _has_ to leave. Not just for his own good and hers, but for the good of them. She wants this time apart work for “them.” For as much as Scully truly _wants_ to come home; she has no idea if or when that will happen.

It hits her as she rocks up from her knees, slaps her in the face with a sting similar to the one piercing her chest: that she’s been hoping for that very thing to happen—for her return home since the moment she decided to leave.

She wants Mulder, her husband in every sense of the word. He is her home.

In an act of utter defiance to the promise she made herself a year ago, Scully leans in closer, presses her lips between his brows, and murmurs her eternal promise, “I never stopped loving you.” Her whisper is barely audible yet loud enough to make tidal waves within the sea of her soul. It doesn’t seem like nearly enough. “God, Mulder… you’re still my constant, my touchstone.”

A funny thought trickles through her mind after she breathes out those heart-wrenching, all-encompassing words: how easy it is for her to express her devotion for him vocally now after spending their early years together actively avoiding it.

Backing away with reluctance, fingers resting atop her tingling lips, she wonders if he will remember this through his haze of feverish delirium; wonders when she leaves her physical presence here in the middle of the night, if it will linger long enough for him to remember how much she still cares; how much she loves him; how much she always will.

As she quietly makes her way into the hall, a long, satisfied sigh escapes him and his whisper melts her heart. “And you are mine.”

 

——

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. Unspoken Truths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mulder comforts Scully during a rough night as she battles her cancer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From an anon tumblr prompt for an angst pre revival, or cancer arc sickfic.

——

 

Mulder’s black Oxfords echo along the hospital hallway as he searches for Scully’s room number he’d coaxed from a nurse. 

She had left the office early and asked if he was free to drive her home after the extensive testing appointment for her oncologist. He hadn’t hesitated to reassure her that he would. At this point, he’d hand over his heart on a silver platter if she asked. Scully had done an excellent job of turning a cheek to his outstretched hand for weeks now. And being the profiler that he is, he believes the reasoning is to push him, and the reality that she might actually need his support into her hidden box of denial labeled Things I Don’t Tell Mulder.

The heavy door of room number 42 swings open and dings off the rubber stopper, startling Scully sitting on the edge of the table. 

“Hey, it’s only me,” he announces, trying hard to smile instead of grimace at the stark white of her skin blending into the darkness under her crystalline blue eyes. Her thin, porcelain body nearly disappears beneath her standard issue hospital gown. 

“Sorry… just jumpy today.” Scully nearly forgot she had asked him for a ride earlier per her doctor's request. Last time one of the nurses had to call her a cab due to a mishap of stumbling into a wall as her vision blurred. She’s had Dr. Zuckerman’s words “slow down before you fall down and don’t get up” doing a fine job of distracting her from focusing on anything else. 

“A lot of tests this time?”

She glances down at her bandaid riddled arms and feels a fresh wave of muscle aches ripple through her body. “Yeah.”

He leans a hip along the table next to her half bare legs and she prepares to hear him ask the one question she wishes he wouldn’t. “You okay?”

Scully considers telling him what he hopes to hear, but chooses not to obfuscate this time as his warm hand slips into hers. “I am now.”

—

One silent car ride, and a roiling stomach coupled with two Sticking Her Head Out The Window incidents later, Scully unlocks her apartment door with shaky fingers and a relieved sigh.  

“So...”

“Thanks for the ride, Mulder,” she cuts in, turning to drop her purse and keys unceremoniously on the couch. “I appreciate your help, but I think I’m going to take a bath, and maybe squeeze in some reading.” 

Truth is, she knows that with the severe bouts of vertigo she been experiencing lately, her bath will become a quick shower as she loses the contents of her stomach down the drain. And if she’s lucky, she’ll be strong enough to throw pajamas on before pouring herself into bed. 

Mulder stares at his awe-inspiring, intelligent, strong-willed partner, and witnesses for the first time just how terrible a liar she is. 

“Ah, well, in that case, let me go grab you some soup from across the street while you get started. And don’t say ‘no,’ Scully, I heard the doctor’s parting words as I was being sent back to the waiting room. You have to try to eat, especially after today.” 

Mulder is not going to let her shove him aside tonight. She had opened the door for him to help her, whether she really wants it or not, and he plans to waltz right through it. As he waits for her excuse, he watches her pinch the bridge of her nose and wearily rock back on her heels. 

 _Jesus Christ, she can barely stand,_ his mind screams. 

Finally, she rolls her head along her shoulders and rubs her neck. She stiff and sore, he knows. He knows, because Mulder did what he does best: research and obsess. And obsessing about finding a cure for Scully, has lead him to discover every little detail regarding her side effects. The ones she never speaks about—but he sees chipping away at her resolve, and it slices off a vital piece of him every day. 

“All right, Mulder. That’s nice of you,” she relents as she glides past him, her lithe frame barely leaving impressions in the plush rug, and disappears into the bathroom. “You can just leave it in the kitchen for me and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Mulder doesn’t answer, because he has no intention of leaving her alone tonight. Or any other, if he has anything to say about it. 

—

“I’m back,” Mulder calls out as he sets the hot soup and crackers on the dining room table. He pauses to listen for water sloshing against the tub, but he hears nothing. 

Mulder had tried to hurry back but got held up in long line at the cafe. Twice, he caught himself bouncing on the balls of his feet with anxiety over leaving her alone. He’s not dense. He knows she’s fully capable of being by herself, but the fact that she _doesn’t have to be_ is what ruffles his feathers. Scully has been home alone for months now since her diagnosis, when he hasn’t been crowding her with his presence, that is. But, this is the first time he has actually witnessed her fragility outside of work, and it has left him thoroughly shaken. 

A loud retching sound followed by a guttural moan pierces through the silence. “Scully?” 

He runs through the kitchen and around the corner to her bathroom. Flinging the door open without knocking, Mulder gasps at the scene before him. He stumbles over the bath mat that’s rumbled and askew in the front of the doorway. The steam from her shower sends a rolling mist into his face and it blurs his vision. He nearly misses Scully’s curled little body haphazardly wrapped in a towel as she buries her face into the toilet bowl. 

He stands there frozen, staring at the woman he’s desperately in love with as she heaves through whimpering sobs. “Oh, Scully…”

Her watery, bloodshot eyes lock onto his, and the sheer force of the battle she’s been fighting behind closed doors literally brings him to his knees. 

“Mulder… I’m fine,” she groans, dragging it out, but accepts his soft touches along her slippery skin. The towel is barely doing its job in covering her nudity, but the only thing that sticks in his mind is how easily he can see every curve and line of her ribs and spine. 

He grunts in disagreement as he carefully pulls back her wet hair plastered to her face and holds it at the base of her slender neck. His stomach drops when a finger grazes her little pink scar. “You’re not.”

Scully stiffens, swinging her head around to glare at her partner, and the room spins. “It’s jus…” Her words slur around the surge of warm liquid seeping into her mouth. 

“Jesus, Scully!” Mulder yanks the hand towel off the rack behind him and holds it to her nose. Horrified, he watches helplessly as crimson bleeds into the cream cotton. “So much blood.” 

Scully pinches her nose as she lays her head back along her arm draped over the toilet seat. Mulder has no idea what to do, so he just continues to soothe her by rubbing circles along her arm and back, massaging away the stiffness he noticed earlier, while trying to hold back his own protesting gut at the image of her white teeth stained in red. 

Time stretches like taffy as he takes in the rainbow colored bruises that riddle her delicate skin. As painful as it is for him to examine her battle wounds, it’s necessary considering he is kneeling at eye-level with her partially exposed left breast. 

“It’s just a nipple,” Scully comments, her voice muffled behind the blood soaked towel, but Mulder sees the smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth. 

He can’t help but smirk back. “And an amazing one at that.” She grants him a genuine smile that swells his heart. Still holding back her slick hair with one hand, he adjusts the towel to cover her rounded breast with the other. Scully gives her thanks by nuzzling her smooth cheek against his wrist like a kitten and sighs. 

Mulder knows what’s coming before she even makes a sound.

“Thank you, Mulder, but you’re off the hook now,” she mumbles, tossing the ruined rag to the floor and unconsciously leans further into him. 

Her rebuffing words are directly contradicting her body language. No matter what she _says_ to push him away, unspoken truths will be discussed here tonight. 

“I’ll be right here to hold your hair in the middle of the night whenever you need me to, Scully.” 

Scully swipes a hand across her mouth and shakes her head, ignoring the pang in her heart that wishes he would do exactly that. “I don’t need you hovering in the middle of the night. You don’t owe me anything, Mulder.” 

 _I owe you everything,_ his heart offers. But his mouth can only utter, “More than you know,” as his words are lost under the rush of flushing toilet water. 

Feeling slightly better, Scully reluctantly pulls away from Mulder’s grasp on her hair and gentle caress of her back. Taking a closer look at him, she notices that his pants are soaked, his hair mussed, and his white dress shirt has a splattering of blood across the pocket. And for the first time since he held her hand at the hospital where she was both exposed emotionally and physically, she feels a flush of embarrassment. 

“Thanks, but I’m fine now,” she lies. She will never be fine again. But Mulder’s touch and tenderness towards her, has always made her feel safe and she can’t help but selfishly yearn for more on her loneliest of nights. Yet right now, knowing that enjoying the feel of him like this as her life slips away faster than she can relish it, is too emotionally dangerous for them both. “I just need to change.”

Mulder reaches in to pull her up from her slumped position wedged between the wall and toilet. “Okay, here, let me help you and—”

Sudden annoyance and misplaced anger shoots hotly through her veins. 

“I’m fine, dammit! I can do it myself,” she snaps, on the verge of an emotional firestorm. The dejected look on her partners face quells her inner rage enough to add, “Please, Mulder… go.”

Scully watches him nod and blink away the hurt brimming in his eyes before he turns and leaves. “Goddamn mood swings.” Jerking the towel to the floor, she chokes back a sob and rocks to her knees. She lets a hot tear sear her cheek for what she’s said to the man she secretly loves before her resolve returns enough to stand and shuffle her way into the bedroom. 

—

Dressed and still emotionally reeling, Scully walks into her living room, fully expecting to see it dark and empty, only to stumble into Mulder’s backside instead. 

“Hey,” he says with that sweet, irritatingly handsome smile, as if that could erase the last half hour of humiliation. “That’s one way to cop a feel.”

“You’re still here.”

He shrugs and brushes his fingertips along the sleeve of her satin pajamas. “Can’t get rid of me that easily.” 

Another surge of white hot anger swells beneath the surface of her obvious confusion. “Look, Mulder, I really appreciate your help tonight. The ride, the support, the soup, and…” 

“And?”

_Everything in between._

“I’ve told you twice now that you don’t need to stay,” she huffs. _If_ _I’m stern enough_ , she thinks, _he’ll leave me to wallow in peace._

She watches his nostrils flare and the green in his eyes swirl. “Not tonight, Scully.”

His stern, whispered refusal feels like gasoline poured over her open emotional flame.

“You think you’re doing me a favor, huh?” she growls. “You think I want to see pity from you, see your face fall every time you have to pull the car over for me to vomit in my hair, or when I can’t stand the smell of my own lunch? How about when you try to hide the fact that your eyes are suddenly red and puffy after I return from the bathroom at work to wash the blood from my face?”

Mulder steps forward, holding his hands up in surrender. The pained expression twists his beautiful face and it only spurs her on.

“You think by staying here to watch me sob into the toilet bowl, holding my hair back, and wiping my tears, that you’re paying me some sort of penance for your sins you believe you’ve thrust upon me?” 

She wants to yell, scream until her throat is as raw as her feelings. But she just doesn’t have the energy, and contrary to her biting words, she doesn’t want to hurt her partner. She never does. 

“Yeah, Scully, I suppose you’ve had plenty of opportunity to think that about me.” His eyes mist and shoulders slump, perfectly willing to accept that as fact, even though this moment is not about him at all. 

Fighting the fire by his side has always been _her_ choice; even when they burn together. 

“No, Mulder; no. I told you before… this is my life.” _Even if it has become yours, too,_ she thinks. “Go home, Mulder. Just… go home.”

Mulder shakes his head, incredulous that she’s just thrown up what little stomach she has left, and let him soothe her like a child on her blood stained floor, yet she won’t allow herself to need him. “Scul—”

“Please.” Her life, her heart is already so entwined with his that she can’t stand to let her death pull him six feet under with her. 

The love she has for him is why she pushes him away. 

_Why can’t he see that?_

“Don’t shut me out! he pleads. “You need someone to help you.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Everyone does, Scully. Even you,” Mulder rasps, his voice thick with rising tears. He wants more than anything to trade places with her, to lay down what little life he feels he has left for her. He owes her that much at least. But, he’d settle for falling to his knees to pay penance on her bathroom floor just one more time if she let him. “And, I want… I’d like to be your someone.”

Her chest tightens and her heart quickens under his intense gaze. She can’t do this with him.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She just… she can’t. The future justice she planned to find with Mulder by her side will inevitably fail now that she creeps closer to death's door. That realization casts a ghost-like image of doom on their friendship. 

Tears sting Scully’s eyes as he gently lifts her chin from her chest with the crook of a finger. They have so little time together. She can feel it slipping away with every smothered sob she hides from him; and she’d be lying if she said she wouldn’t spend every minute of it by his side chasing truths in the dark. 

“I know you don’t,” he whispers. “But, I’m still here for you, Scully. I’m here. So, please let me in.”

Finally, she lets go and sobs, unable to fully express how much he means to her as the tension in her drains from the inside out. She moves her arms from her hips to hold onto him, desperately gripping at the back of his metallic scented shirt as he sways from side to side. 

“I’m just so tired, Mulder,” she confesses. She’s so so tired of worrying. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s okay to let her best friend shoulder the burden of never-ending angst with her now. 

Mulder murmurs reassurance as she tucks herself up under his chin, snuggling against his chest as he kisses the top of her head.

Her nose nudges Mulder’s jaw, her welling pools of blue pulling him under, and his breath leaves his chest in an instant. He leans his forehead against hers as he strokes her freckled cheekbones with his thumbs. His head is spinning with so much love and longing for this woman in his arms, he can hardly contain his heart from pounding through his chest. Her breath is warm and shallow as it wisps across his lips. Its intensity sends goosebumps across his forearms. 

“God, Scully, just… please let me love you the way you deserve.” 

She slides her hands up his chest and through the back of his hair. “Mulder...” The scrape of her nails on his scalp makes him dizzy, and the softness of her lips moving against his cheek nearly brings him to his knees.

This coil of tension between them, this unresolved expression of love looms like smoke from the embers of her dwindling fire that barely remains burning within. 

Emboldened, her lips vibrate along his skin as she answers the one request for unspoken truths that she can. “Then show me.”

 

——

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback is fuel! Thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Chapter 3 is NEW and with a blend of angst and romance.
> 
> Thank you Cate for the beta, as usual!!!


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